Since I have started writing for this site I have found that the words do not flow like they did when I was in college. I have been out of college for a decade, so this could just be nostalgia on my part, but I don’t think so. This little problem was bothering me quite a bit until this week when I had an epiphany of sorts. In essence, I think that certain “muscle groups” in my brain have become a little flabby since my heady days as an English major at a liberal arts school. In particular, I think that I have the writer’s mental equivalent of a “beer gut” and I am searching for ways to tone my writing muscles.

The obvious solution is to spend more time writing. Practice makes perfect, they say (whoever “they” are). However, when exercising in order to eliminate the more corporeal forms of flab you have to be careful to keep your routine diverse. Your body will eventually adapt to an exercise routine with no variety and the routine’s effectiveness will diminish. Thus, spending more time at the keyboard is only a partial solution. Variety is the spice of life and the punch in a good exercise routine - mental or physical.

One of the solutions I have come up with is to spend more quality time reading. I already spend quite a bit of time reading, but most of my diet here consists of technical books and morsels served up through RSS. Both of these diets are unsatisfying. The technical books that I read are mostly Java books, since Java development is what I spend most of my time doing. In spite of what we as Java developers may like to think, this is a pretty narrow field, and after a while the books begin to repeat themselves.

In this age of easy Internet publishing and effortless syndication, information comes in bite sized chuncks. In spite of the amount of time I spend online every day, I rarely read anything more than a page long. Sometimes this is because what I am reading is short. Often, it is because I have so many things that I want to read that I skim over the longer passages or make do with a summary. I believe that this phenomenon has encouraged a mindset that values terseness and volume over quality. To me, this new paradigm is a little like diet soda: it tastes good but has absolutely no nutritional value.

So, what kind of mental diet can remedy this situation? The primary criteria seems to be a broad vocabulary. Also, any reading material should be at least a little challenging. I still have many books on my shelf from my aforementioned stint as an English major and I spent some time browsing through them recently. I think that I am going to start by reading some of the works of Immanuel Kant. My thinking here is that Kant wrestled with some extremely challenging and abstract ideas and it will be instructive to see how he communicates those ideas. It has been some time since I last read Kant, so it will be like reading it for the first time. Note that Kant’s style is, to say the least, dense. My goal is not to learn to immitate Kant’s style, but to be exposed to it. After that, I think I will endulge is some literature. Perhaps William Faulkner, James Joyce or Ayn Rand.

My biggest challenge will be finding the time to do all of this reading. Between holding down a job, keeping up with the Java world and writing for this site, I have little time left for other pursuits. I said much the same thing last year when I decided to start going to the gym regularly, and so far I have been fairly successful in that area. Besides, I think I am going to enjoy this new exercise regimen.

Tags: blogging, learning, lifehacks, writing